The fourth beta of eComStation 2.0 has been released. Some of the new features include better wireless support, the Lucide document viewer, the Psi/2 instant messenger, SAMBA, and much more. "This is the fourth beta release of the eComStation 2.0. This product is available for download to all registered eComStation customers with active Software Subscription Services."

It's not the matter of crystal icons. It's not even about eye candy or effects. It's about something that is offensive to the eye. I happen to be a designer, and maybe I'm a little over sensitive to this matters, but let's face it people, it's downright ugly.

Maybe it's more functional and feature packed that Windows, Linux and OS X altogether, let's forget about that ... but it looks like something the cat dragged in from 1993.

I think that beauty is on the eye of the beholder... I never quite understood what was so wrong with the Win 3.X interface, for instance. Sure, a pig with a lipstick is still a pig as far as the underlying OS back then was concerned, but I always liked the simplicity, high contrast on the colors (nice use of white) and how the 3D concept was represented on the Win 3.X interface.

Windows 95 was too "flat" for my taste when I saw it for the first time, although one gets used to it after a while. I know that some people swear by the Windows 2000 look-n-feel (which is more or less a refinement of the original Windows 95 UI, I believe) and I used to be one of them.

MacOS Platinum style was also very beautiful and the highly intuitive interface with good choice of colors was what made so many people moan when OSX with the lickable widgets came out. I happen to like both with a slightly advantage to OSX.

Luna is hideous indeed but other than changing the color scheme or installing MS Royale theme, I donīt waste my time trying to dress Windows anymore. It was never meant to sit well with themes anyway.

The old motif style on Unix was hideous as well, but at least the UI was well thought and wouldnīt get into the way of the user. But it was terrible nonetheless. The only workstations vendors that somewhat addressed that issue in the old days were Sun and SGI. The others usually used a different color scheme on Motif to differentiate themselves (DEC with its orange UI, IBM, etc.). But even with the nice touches here and there that SGI and Sun put into their products, I couldnīt stand to look all day long to those widgets.

OTOH, both KDE and GNOME represent the state-of-the-art on the UI subject and sometimes can be made to look even better than OSX (highly subjective, I know).

BeOS, RISCOS, Amiga, GEM, MorphOS... All of them had (or have) beautiful interfaces if you ask me.

I too think that the default OS/2 UI feels a bit dated but not to the point that I couldnīt get used with it after a while. People had put up with a lot worse in the old days, IMHO. As long as the thing allows me to do what I need/want to do I am happy and OS/2īs WPS excels in this regard whereas GNOME which is regarded as the peak of usability by some... Well, letīs just say that it is not nearly as capable as the former.